Chapter 3
“Geez, what happened there, Black?”
“Huh?” Sirius looked around to find Frank Longbottom looking pointedly at his bare shoulder. More specifically, the claw-shaped gash on his bare shoulder. Sirius had forgotten all about it, what with the events that followed immediately after it happened. He was flooded with the memory of holding Remus as he transformed back into his human self. He had barely even registered when Moony dug his claw into his shoulder, drawing blood. He had been too focused on holding Remus together through the chilling shrieks and tremors that racked through his body. He angled his neck to get a better look at it. The skin had already puckered over but it still looked fresh and bright pink.
Sirius shared a look with James who was changing into his practice uniform nearby. “Got pecked by an owl,” he lied.
Frank looked at him skeptically. “Must have been one mean owl.”
“Totally. Right, Prongs?”
“Right,” James nodded his head too many times like he always did when he was lying through his teeth. “It was bloody mental!”
“You want me to heal it for you?” Frank asked. “ I’ve been practicing my healing charms.”
“No, that’s alright,” he tried to brush off the older boy.
“I've gotten really good at them, though. It’ll just take a second.”
“No, don’t worry about it. Really.”
“You sure, mate?”
Sirius clenched his fist and did everything in his power to not snap at his teammate. Why couldn’t Frank just drop it? “Yeah, I think it makes me look cool. Don’t you think?” He gave him a look that dared him to disagree.
Frank raised a single eyebrow. “Sure…See you two on the pitch then.”
“That was a close one,” James said as he shoved his stuff into his locker and slammed the door shut. Frank definitely didn’t buy their cover, but hopefully, he wouldn’t bring it up again, especially in front of Remus who would beat himself up about it if he found out. “Why don’t you try a disillusionment charm on it?”
“It won’t do anything,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” James said sadly. They both knew magic didn’t work on werewolf injuries.
Sirius pulled his jersey over his head and tied his hair back with the elastic that lived permanently on his wrist. “Let’s go,” he said and grabbed his broom and club. He was done talking about it. It was nothing, really. Nothing compared to the countless scars Remus had given himself in the past ten years. Besides, it didn’t even hurt, he had had much worse. He stalked out of the locker room with James close behind him.
Once he was up in the air he felt all the pent-up tension in his body fade away. The team had been practicing nearly every evening in preparation for their upcoming game against Ravenclaw that weekend and James had taken to waking him up early and forcing him to run drills with him before breakfast. He didn’t care as much about winning as the other boy unless it was a game against Slytherin, but he didn’t mind the extra time on the pitch. Flying always felt like freedom to him. It also gave him time to think.
It had been over a week since Remus’ birthday. Ten days, to be exact. He hadn’t had a chance to be alone with him since, much to Sirius’ disappointment. They hadn’t so much as mentioned their new soul marks. He wasn’t sure how to navigate the situation at hand and as a result, things had been noticeably strained between them. He was used to clinging to his friend without having to think about it. He was clingy with all of his close friends—Remus, James, Marlene, and even his brother before they started school. It was most likely due to the years he spent touch starved in the Black family home, but that was just how he was. Now he couldn’t even sit next to Remus without James shooting a knowing smirk at them. Remus would blush and shift away from him every time it happened. Sirius almost found himself regretting the decision to tell James, but he wouldn’t have been able to keep it from him for long anyway. James knew him too well.
He had been having nightmares, too. They came less frequently the longer he was at school—the worst string of nightmares usually came right after he returned from breaks at Grimmauld Place, so he was caught off guard when they came back at full force halfway through the term. He was accustomed to crawling into Remus’ bed when they happened, but would that even be appropriate now? He would be too worried about making Remus uncomfortable to get any real sleep. He could always wake James, but it wouldn’t be the same. He loved James like a brother, but he would never be able to understand the dark thoughts that were swimming around his head. He also knew James would make a big deal about it. He would want him to talk about it, and that would only make him feel worse. If he said it out loud then he wouldn’t be able to pretend anymore. And Peter was absolutely out of the question. His bed was always full of crumbs and his pillow smelled perpetually like a wet rat.
He contemplated visiting Poppy in the hospital wing to ask for some dreamless sleep potion, but she would ask too many questions that he couldn’t answer. His mother had drilled it into him that he was not allowed to talk about home to any of the Hogwarts faculty or he would suffer the consequences. For now, he would just have to get used to sleeping alone.
“Heads up!” Gideon yelled. He looked up in time to see the bludger flying right toward him. He lifted his club and hit it right before it knocked him square in the face. It felt good. He resolved to clear his head and put his all into practice, pushing himself to fly faster and hit harder.
Time passed quickly as he zoomed around the pitch, protecting his teammates from the rogue bludger while trying to deter the chasers from scoring a goal on Marlene, who was stationed in front of the three staggered hoops. “Alright, good practice everyone,” the captain called out.
Sirius was drenched in sweat when he touched down on the ground, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to shower in front of everyone else. He didn’t want them to notice the contusion on his shoulder as Frank had. He lingered in the locker room, waiting until the other boys went to go shower, and then he quickly changed back into his robes and headed back to the dorm.
…
Game Day
The other marauders had already left the dorm when Remus finally got out of bed on Saturday. He had heard them getting ready for their pre-game practice that morning but decided to stay in bed until it was absolutely necessary for him to get up. It had been a long week of trying to avoid Sirius. It wasn’t possible to avoid him completely since they shared a room and everything, but he was able to avoid being alone with him for the most part. He knew he was being silly, but he couldn’t help his awkward behavior. He could feel Sirius looking at him all the time now. He wasn’t sure when it had started-- if it was new or Remus had just never noticed before.
Any small glance or touch from him ended with Remus panicking and finding any excuse to run off and be alone. The feelings he had for Sirius weren’t new, but now that James and Sirius both knew about them, it was like he finally had to admit them to himself. He had been content for years with admiring the other boy from afar, believing that he would never have a chance with him. Now he wasn’t sure how to act around him. It also didn’t help that James knew and was so obvious about it that he was sure Peter would figure it out in no time.
Remus changed quickly into jeans and a red jacket to support his house. A lot of students wore their robes to games, but it wasn’t mandatory and most muggle-borns or half-bloods opted to wear muggle clothes. He shoved his mess of frizzy curls into a beanie and bounded down the stairs where Lily and Mary had promised to wait for him.
The two girls were sitting on the loveseat together when Remus made it down to the common room. Remus could hear them whispering and giggling to themselves as he approached. They were also in muggle clothes, like Remus. They often chose to forgo their robes when they weren’t in class. Lily had just said that they were uncomfortable and bulky while Mary claimed that they stifled her creativity. She was always wearing something that looked straight out of a fashion magazine when she had the chance, a perfect combination of edgy and girly.
“You’re late,” Lily piped up when she saw him.
“Am I?” They still had plenty of time to get down to the stands before the game started, but Lily was always early to everything. It was one of her only flaws, save for her stubbornness.
“You were supposed to be here 10 minutes ago,” she chastised.
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Remus countered.
“Yes, but I wanted to get good seats for the game,”
“You don’t even like quidditch, Lils,” Mary reminded her, poking her in the ribs. Lily squealed and batted her hands away.
“Marls is starting this game. We can’t miss it.”
“Come on, then. I’ll make sure you get a front-row seat. I’ll even fight a first year if I have to.” Remus promised and they headed down to the stands.
They were still criminally early when they arrived, so they were able to find seats up front without a fight. The girls huddled close together against the cold and Lily cast a heating charm over the three of them. Remus wondered if it would be too abnormal for him to shift out from under the charm's effects but ultimately resigned to being too hot for the duration of the game. Lily was smart and he didn’t want her to wise up to his secret.
“Should we save a seat for Peter?” Lily asked as students started to trickle into the stands. She took out an assortment of snacks from her bag for the three of them to share. Mary instantly claimed the bag of her favorite vinegar crisps for herself.
Remus shook his head. “Prongs roped him into helping with the equipment,” he answered, popping a square of dark chocolate in his mouth.
Lily muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “typical Potter” before Mary elbowed her in the side. Lily had started to warm up to James and Sirius in the past year, who she had claimed to hate since they started school. They could even be considered friends now. They were friendly towards each other, at least, but Lily still held a bit of animosity for James. Remus could admit that he had acted like a prick back then, but he had changed a lot since. For one, they were more intentional with their pranks now and only targeted people who deserved it. Remus wondered how Lily was able to be friends with Snape and excuse his bigotry and cruelness but couldn’t look past a couple of pranks pulled by eleven-year-olds. It was something he and Lily argued about often, but Lily was relentless in her affection for the slimy git. Neither understood why the other kept the company they did, but at least James wasn’t a wannabe blood supremacist.
Remus didn’t realize how packed the stand had gotten. His ears were buzzing with the excited chatter of the students around him until the announcer’s voice came over the speakers. The crowd hushed at once as the two teams walked onto the pitch with their brooms in hand. Remus wasn’t proud to admit it, but his eyes instantly zoned in on Sirius in the sea of red and blue. His dark hair was tied up into a knot and he had a smudge of black warpaint beneath each eye.
The game started with a whistle blow that rang loudly in Remus’ ear and the teams flew up into the air on their brooms. Remus tried to resist staring at Sirius, who flew expertly and confidently across the pitch. He wasn’t as good as James, who had been flying since he came out of the womb and became the youngest chaser in twenty-eight years when he made the team in their first year, but he was obviously a natural. He could have played any position, but he found it cathartic to hit stuff with his beater’s club.
Remus knew most of the basic rules but had a hard time following the game. He had to lean over and ask Lily, who had all but memorized the rule book when Marlene made the team at the beginning of the year, for an explanation several times. Mary seemed to be fairing worse than him, but she was enjoying herself, nonetheless, and cheered with the rest of the students in the stands. It was a close game. While the Ravenclaws played the game with a brilliant strategy, the Gryffindors made up for it with their sheer speed and passion for the game.
Remus had been watching the two seekers chase after the snitch when Lily nudged him. He hummed not taking his eyes off the seekers who were weaving dangerously through the air.
“Black is staring at you,” she whispered.
Remus looked up, following her line of sight. Sure enough, Sirius was looking at him. Their eyes met and Remus raised his hand, hesitantly, and waved. Sirius did the same and they stayed like that for several seconds until Lily coughed, breaking him out of his trance. The second he looked away; the stands erupted. The Gryffindor seeker was holding up the snitch in victory.
“Let’s go,” Mary said as she led them down the stairs to meet the team on the pitch. Mary and Lily found their roommate and pounced, enveloping her in a group hug and jumping up and down.
Remus found James and Peter in the throng of celebrating Gryffindors. “Good game, Prongs,” Remus said, clapping him on the back. “Where’s Padfoot?” James winced and nodded his head towards the locker rooms, where their friend was standing with the captain. Sirius had his head turned down while she was talking to him so he couldn’t make out his expression, but his usually perfect posture was slumped. Remus strained his ears to hear what she was talking about but was only able to catch the word “distraction” over the noise. Sirius nodded his head once and then turned towards them, eyes searching for James in the crowd with a frown on his face. His face morphed into a wide grin when he spotted them, and he jogged over. He jumped on James’ back, who spun him around yelling “We won!” over and over again until his foot caught, and they both fell to the ground in a fit of laughter.
Remus couldn’t help but laugh with them and reached his hand out to help Sirius to his feet. Sirius didn’t let go right away but then seemed to remember their current predicament and dropped his hand abruptly. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Remus couldn’t stand the guilty look on his face and realized that he had allowed his awkwardness to affect their friendship. Sirius let out a surprised squeak when Remus pulled him into a hug. His back was wet with sweat, but Remus didn’t mind. “You were great out there.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Remus was amused by Sirius’ reaction to his words. He blushed, a rarity for him, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Thank you,” he mumbled. He looked around and saw that most of the team was heading toward the locker room to shower and change. James was waiting for him by the entrance and watching them. They could tell that he was hiding a smile behind his fist. Sirius turned back to him, “Well I guess I’ll see you back in the tower?” He said it like a question.
“Yeah. See you,” Remus answered. He watched Sirius walk away, towards James and the locker rooms. Sirius punched James squarely on the shoulder when he reached him, and James let out an indignant “Hey!” Remus didn’t stay, not wanting to overhear any of their bickerings, and snuck off to the forest to smoke a cig before heading back to the Gryffindor common room.
…
The four marauders slept in the next morning after a night of celebrating with the entire house the night before. They finally stumbled out of bed just in time for lunch. The meal was a quiet affair with most of the Gryffindor table being too hung-over or sleep deprived to carry on any semblance of a conversation.
“I’m never drinking again,” Peter declared, pushing his empty plate away and laying his head directly on the table.
“You say that every time,” Sirius reminded him, moodily, picking at his food that he had hardly touched.
“Afternoon, boys,” Lily said as she sat down at the table next to Remus. Her bookbag was bursting with books and rolls of parchment so she must have come straight from the library. “Missed you at breakfast this morning.”
“How are you so chipper?” Peter asked, incredulously.
“Yeah,” Remus said suspiciously. “You drank just as much as any of us.”
Lily glanced around at the faculty table. There were only a few professors as most of them preferred to take lunch in their own quarters on the weekends. Dumbledore and McGonagall were both notably absent and the professors who were there were not known for their vigilance. Professor Binns was talking to Flitwick and Slughorn, who both seemed to be bored out of their minds, and Professor Sprout seemed to be deep in conversation with the groundskeeper, Hagrid. Lily pulled a glass vile full of cherry red liquid from her bag. “Pepper-Up Potion,” she said. “Madame Pomfrey lets me take some whenever I volunteer at the infirmary.”
“Evans, have I ever told you how great your hair looks?” Sirius said, batting his eyelashes.
Lily rolled her eyes, immune to the obvious attempt at flattery. “Don’t say I never did anything nice for you lot,” she said and tipped a few drops into each of their pumpkin juice. “Good game by the way,” she said to Sirius and James. “I don’t think I had a chance to tell you yesterday.”
“I didn’t know you like quidditch,” James lit up. “You know, I can teach you a few pointers if you want to learn to play yourself.”
“No thank you,” she said curtly, and James’ face fell. “Anyways, I must be on my way. I only came down to grab something for Mary.”
Peter and Sirius both snickered at James once she was out of earshot. “When will you just give up, mate?”
Remus felt better after Lily’s potion and getting some actual food in his system, so he sat down to pen a letter to his mom when they got back to the dorm. It had been months since he talked to her-- she was always busy working overtime at her job, so she didn’t have much time to write. He wasn’t sure where to even begin telling her about what was going on in his life at the moment. He scribbled out several lines, not sure what to write. Every sentence he started ended with him talking about Sirius, He would try to tell her about his classes but would then go off on a tangent about something funny Sirius said in class. He crumbled up the piece of parchment and threw it in the trash bin. It’s not like she would understand anything from his world anyway, let alone the whole soul mate situation. Everything she knew about the wizarding world, she learned from the short amount of time she had been with his father. In the end, he tore a small strip from an old potions essay and wrote a short note to his mum. It read:
Hi Mum-
School’s going well.
Last moon wasn’t too bad.
Can’t wait for Easter holls.
-R
Remus folded the note into a small square. “I’ll be back,” he told the others and stood to leave, “…going to the owlery.”
“Wait, I’ll go with you. I have to send this letter to Mum and Dad.” James rummaged through his stuff and pulled out several pages of parchment. James’ letters were always long-winded—something that Remus greatly appreciated during the summer months he spent mostly alone.
Peter piped up, “Yeah, me too. Been meaning to send this for days.”
Sirius rolled over from where he was lounging on his bed, listening to one of the albums Remus had got for his birthday. “Well, I might as well tag along then if you lot are all going.”
…
Sirius threw himself down dramatically on a bale of straw while the others attached their letters to the school’s owls. He hated going to the owlery. They had to climb up a rickety, old ladder and it always smelled like…well, owls. He didn’t have any business being there, but he didn’t want to be alone in the dorm with just his thoughts for company. He had woken up that morning feeling nauseous and anxious about how drunk he had been the night before. James kept refilling his cup and after the week of grueling practices and walking on eggshells around Remus, he allowed himself to let loose. The worst part was he hardly remembered anything so he couldn’t be sure if he did anything embarrassing. He vaguely remembered Marls pulling him onto the makeshift dancefloor at some point and staring at Remus. There had definitely been a lot of staring at Remus, he just couldn’t help it. His brain had the hug Remus gave him after their win on a constant loop in his head and he couldn’t think of anything else. Remus would be the death of him.
He was brought out of his thoughts when the trap door to the owlery swung open and Sirius arched his neck to get a better view of who was coming in. “Give me a break,” Sirius mumbled as Snape, Avery, and Mulciber climbed through the hole in the floor.
James spun around at the sound of their entrance and the owl he was holding hooted and flew off without the letter. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think we’re doing in the owlery, Potter? Petting owls?” Snape sneered. Avery and Mulciber stood brutishly behind him, looking dumb. They must not have a single brain cell between them, Sirius thought.
“We were just leaving,” Peter squeaked and made for the trap door. Avery pushed him away and he stumbled into Remus, who caught him before they both fell into the stone wall of the owlery.
James clenched his fist but otherwise remained calm. “Can’t we go a single day without seeing your greasy face, Snivellus?”
“I hate to break it to you, Potter,” Snape spat out his name like it was a vomit-flavored jellybean, “but you are not entitled to the entire castle just because you are Gryffindor's golden boy.”
Sirius rolled his eyes and didn’t bother to get up from where he reclined. Snape would never be a threat to him. Disgraced or not, Snape knew not to mess with The Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, or so he thought. “Just go back to the dungeon where you belong. I’m not in the mood to deal with you today,”
“What’s wrong Black, don’t have anyone to write home to?” Snape sneered. He looked pleased as the comment seemed to rock Sirius with disbelief.
“Shove off, Snape,” Remus warned. “Before I push you off the tower.” Remus stood taller than anyone else in the room, but Snape didn’t seem to be afraid of him.
“I see you have the cutter fighting your battles for you,” he addressed Sirius smugly, clearly proud of his cruel comeback. Sirius seethed. Remus’ scars were off-limits. There was nothing wrong with them, they were beautiful, even, in Sirius’ eyes. But no matter how much Remus tried to pretend like they didn’t bother him, they all knew what he thought of them.
Sirius was up in an instant before he even had a chance to think about what he was doing. He whipped out his wand from the hidden holster in his robes and pointed it directly at Snape’s jugular. The room went cold. Sirius’ magic was tangible, like a biting static in the air. They had all felt the intensity of Sirius’ magic before, but he had gotten better at controlling it over the years. Still, they all knew he was dangerous and unpredictable when he lost control. Snape’s eyes went wide, and he was rooted to the spot like everyone else in the room. There was nothing any of them could do. The moment any of them reached for their wand, Sirius would erupt. They had seen it happen before, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Sirius, it’s ok,” Remus tried to ease the tension. “He’s not worth it.”
Sirius didn’t budge, but the lights flickered in response. James came up behind him, slowly, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “It’s ok,” he repeated and lowered the other boy’s wand hand, but the tension did not dissipate. Sirius’ body began to shake, and Snape swallowed visibly in fear.
Suddenly, the door swung open once again and hit the wall with a loud crash. They all jumped as the bitter old caretaker, Argus Filch, climbed through the opening. “Detention, all of yous, Detention!” he raved as he laid eyes on them.
The energy drained out of Sirius, and he slumped back into James’ arms and passed out.